I just got back from the "Songs" Festival at Kloster Banz in Bad Staffelstein, Germany. I was there 4 nights with Jackie and the place is strangely like being in an old monster movie. It's a huge place and you have to walk through underground hallways to get anywhere. It used to be a castle, then a Benedictine monastery and the little cell we stayed in hasn't been updated since. Very impressive place - Nice to see something so big built so well.

The festival was up on a hill over looking the old castle. The stage was a big structure made with see-thru plastic, so the TV cameras (it was being filmed for TV) could see right thru the whole thing. The first night went late, and I didn't get onstage until after 1 in the morning. And I was sitting in a chair that was not good for playing guitar - couldn't get my fingers on the fret board right…. I was awful. But, as I'm not used to being quite so awful on a regular basis, I kind of enjoyed it. I was performing with my buddy, Wenzel and his band. We actually have a record out over here (hard to get in the States), called "Arlo Guthrie & Wenzel - Every Hundred Years."

The second night was also filmed for TV - basically the same exact show so the TV had two chances of getting it right. I was much better and we all had a pretty good time… So they ended up with at least one good gig for German TV. Still there were plenty of other artists and I had a chance to hang out and meet many of them. Klaus Hoffman & Reinhard Mey were there and Klaus was especially fun to play with backstage. I haven't had much time in the same place with the same performers over the years. Tthat was the one outstanding feature of this festival.

The last day I waited for our time to perform and the evening went into night, and the wind was blowing and the rain began falling, and just before we walked out the police came and shut down the festival saying that a big storm was coming and they had to have everyone leave immediately.

So I'm standing there listening to the announcements and wondering what they were saying - It was all in German. All I knew was, it was my time to perform and the cops come out to speak and everyone starts leaving. I'm thinking 'Okay I know this is a conservative area of Bavaria, but to announce my presence by police, and everyone starts packing up - I didn't think I was that dangerous." Then someone came over and told me what was happening. I took a deep breath and thought 'Okay, it's time for some good beer.'

Then it occurred to me that I would soon be back in the USA in the city of Madison doing a gig to help support the effort of the union and average guys there. I won't be getting much sleep until then, so it could be a pretty funny gig. And just in case there are any conservative friends reading this - no i wasn't invited (although I believed I'd be welcomed). I have been waiting for a chance to help out and I couldn't think of a better date than my dad's birthday, to go on up and lend my voice to the call:The call that sounds out through time and circumstance to make an effort to move beyond talk of money and power, and get into the old feelings of standing by each other in times of need. There's more to the world than money - standing with friends who believe in higher ideals than privatizing everything. Sometimes it's a good idea to work together on making civilization a better place to be. That's what the union means to me.

There's no way any one guy can build the kind of castle I just left. It took a King to command that kind of structure - even the old Wall Street barons that made their fortunes years ago didn't build anything like this place. In America, we got rid of the Kings a while back. We became a nation freed from the tyranny of the lineage of power and authority. We became our own kings and queens. And when we worked together as a nation we built things unequalled by Kings elsewhere. My father took the time to write and sing about some of those things: The Grand Coolie Dam, just to mention one. Our cities became destinations of people everywhere seeking to get to a place where people were free.

There are always people more comfortable being owned, than being free. At least they know where you stand. It takes courage to be free - you have to think for yourself. And when you choose to work together you get to do amazing things - like go to the moon. That working together thing - That's called government - that's us.

So I'm coming to help folks who want better government - so we can do great things. If there's folks in government who want to go back to the days of Kings and Wall Street Barons, let's remind them what we did as a nation back in 1776.

Well said. We may not have kings anymore, but it seems we still have those that think they are royalty, and from a power and economic standpoint, they may be. One popular definition of insane is to repeat the same thing over and over, and expect different results. Regardless of calling it "Trickle down", "Supply Side", "protecting job creators", the shit some are trying to sell us is a proven failure, so they change the packaging and the salespeople and try to sell it to us again.Marketing. One other popular definiton of insane is to be a moderator of the Arlonet message boards.

An old mate from college, a groucho marxist and a fine teacher, sent me a FB message last week to tell me you were coming to help them in Wisconsin. I told him last winter when they were hanging out in the capitol building that if you could do it, you probably would. He is mighty grateful. Good on ya, Arlo. Still the guy.

Excellent post. Going to the Moon had two parts. One was a rocket team that had been hanging out since the early 30s as kids trying to make something that would get them into space. Then a war where they found themselves on the wrong side of history. Then a nation willing to take them in let them become citizens and let them live where they wanted to live (which was a mile from from where I was born). Then the Great Race where that same country decided to take what we know about doing big things and they knew about doing hard things and put that together into one big rush to the rock in the sky. Some say it wasn't worth doing because we didn't learn much. I say we learned what we could do so I agree with you. It was from my vantage point as a kid, an awfully cool thing to do.

Hard year ahead. I'm not a conservative. I'm Southern. It's a different view. On the other hand, this morning the tenor who stands on my left in church choir, a very conservative fellow, and his wife posted a picture of the two them standing in front of the door at Teresa's in the alley in Stockbridge. They told me they had a brownie and it made them both feel better, which is their way of saying, they wanted to be a part of it all. Don't ever think you aren't making a difference (well, you and Norman Rockwell). This couple is Republican to the bone, but they have good hearts and they love God. For whatever position one takes in politics. I think we should always have a brownie ready for anyone who asks. They might just be that one guy on the road; they might know how to get us to the Moon.

I just got back from Madison today -- my sister and I had booked a long weekend trip awhile ago, to go to the North American Discworld Convention (gathering of fans of Terry Pratchett*, author of wonderful fantasy novels set on Discworld, a disk on top of four elephants that are on top of a turtle that swims through space, and who (I learned during the convention) also has had interesting experiences with LA airport security). I had never been to Madison before and really liked it -- to begin with, any place where the walkers outnumber the drivers is my kind of place, and that appeared to be the case downtown around State Street. Also, fried cheese curds...yum and double yum.

Had I been able to figure a way to do it, I would've extended the visit to go to your show, Arlo.

The best I could do was go to the Barrymore last night to see another show (Little Feat). Even before the show started, the Barrymore people were talking about how excited they were to have you come on Thursday, and encouraging everyone there to buy tickets. They seem like really nice people who want to put on a good show and want everyone to have a good time. And everyone pretty much did. Except, I just want to gingerly note, the sound was a bit off -- kinda tinny sometimes, kinda distorted, kinda like listening to someone sing in a long tunnel full of water. I'm not expert in sound, and maybe it was just an off night for them or maybe my east-coast-ears were just out of place, but just thought I'd mention it as I know it's something you care about and thought you might want to know that theater might need a little extra effort in that area.

*"The only things known to go faster than ordinary light is monarchy, according to the philosopher Ly Tin Weedle. He reasoned like this: you can't have more than one king, and tradition demands that there is no gap between kings, so when a king dies the succession must therefore pass to the heir instantaneously. Presumably, he said, there must be some elementary particles -- kingons, or possibly queons -- that do this job, but of course succession sometimes fails if, in mid-flight, they strike an anti-particle, or republicon. His ambitious plans to use his discovery to send messages, involving the careful torturing of a small king in order to modulate the signal, were never fully expanded because, at that point, the bar closed."-- Terry Pratchett, Mort

*"The only things known to go faster than ordinary light is monarchy, according to the philosopher Ly Tin Weedle. He reasoned like this: you can't have more than one king, and tradition demands that there is no gap between kings, so when a king dies the succession must therefore pass to the heir instantaneously. Presumably, he said, there must be some elementary particles -- kingons, or possibly queons -- that do this job, but of course succession sometimes fails if, in mid-flight, they strike an anti-particle, or republicon. His ambitious plans to use his discovery to send messages, involving the careful torturing of a small king in order to modulate the signal, were never fully expanded because, at that point, the bar closed."-- Terry Pratchett, Mort

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